Monday, December 29, 2008

Since I haven't had a chance to photograph my new paintings yet, I thought I'd post a few older things. These are the highlights of the paintings I did from Jr. year of high school to Jr. year of college.

This is the first painting i did in high school that I really liked and was proud of. It's of Seth McClean. Yes, he actually was that skinny. Done in acrylic on canvas.

This is my first successful foray into oil painting, also from high school. It's of another crazy friend of mine named April Fredrickson. It's on a wooden cabinet door that was found in a stash of stuff in the wood shop at Sac High.

This is the beginning of my C-clamp phase. As well as finding those nifty cabinet door things in the wood shop at Sac High, I found this crazy huge C-clamp and decided to try posing with it. I started liking C-clamps because I liked all the old tools that belonged to my great great grandfather that lived (the tools, not the grandfather) in my basement in Sacramento, and also because of my mom really liking this Jim Dine painting of a heart with a C-clamp in the middle of it at the SF moma. She told me she liked it because it looked like the clamp was both clamping the heart shut and sort of a handle to open the heart. It made a big impression on me for whatever reason.

This is the first painting I did after my first year of college. I didn't take any painting classes freshman year, just a drawing class, art 8 and ceramics. This is the last painting I did before starting to use mediums other than terpenoid to paint with. It's a portrait of Jasper Leach.

This is one of the first assignments from my first painting class at Berkeley. The assignment was to do a "Home Depot Still Life," which suited me fine because I was able to use all the neat old tools from my basement. I think this also had an influence on my continuing to use C-clamps in my work.

This is a portrait of my friend Julia's former roommate Linda Berrera. She was a great model for both of us. The photo I worked from for this was taken in Cloyne's (my old co-op) back yard from a ladder that had been left up there for some reason. It was a really beautiful sunny day, and I also got some great photos of Julia, her then boyfriend Chris, and Linda all jumping in Cloyne's bounce house.

This is a portrait I did of myself dressed as a pin up girl, using the C-clamp theme again. I've always been fascinated with old pin up art, like Vargas and Gil Elvgren, and I thought that the hardness and mascunlinity of the huge C-clamp was a good contrast to that. I'm sort of vaguely trying to talk about gender and my self image here, I guess. Make of it what you will.

This painting is of my former employer's rich friend. I did it mostly to try and see if i could sell it to him. I didn't ever get a chance to, but I really like the way it turned out. It's the most lucian frued-ish thing I've painted.

This is a portrait of my friend Emily Brundige, whose blog I mentioned in my first post. I did it in Squeak Carnwath's class at Berkeley. I could never tell if she wanted me to have a style and subject matter already worked out or if she wanted me to experiment, but she certainly did a number on my confidence in my artwork. I decided that if she wanted a theme it would be my friends as pin up with oversized tools from my great great grandfather. People in the critique for this talked about how her arm looks like a penis. I don't see it.

This is a painting of Jasper from a photo I took on halloween. We had gotten in a fight over something stupid earlier that day, so he dressed as a southern belle to make it up to me. I was tring to experiment with painting technique mostly here. Everyone seems to really like the drips. I just thought it was funny that it was a man and no one knew. The dress he's wearing was my great grandmother's.

This is a painting of my friend Julia Wiener. I got the idea for it when we I went home with her over spring break to visit New York. Her hair was blowing like crazy on the Staten Island Ferry, and it was really beautiful. It was too dark to get any good photos that night (I tried), but I had her pose for me later and made this image. This was my first real experimentation with glazing, which is now the primary technique I use when oil painting. It was also done on canvas primed with rabbit skin glue (gross, I know), which turned me on to how much fun it is painting on an off-white surface. I mostly do oil painting on wood primed with clear acrylic medium these days, and I guess this is the beginning of that trend.

I had to churn out a bunch of paintings to fullfill the requirement for Squeak's class, and this is one of my filler paintings, but i do really like it. One of my last time painting my grandfather's tools. Also, red is my favorite color, and these tools were all red in real life. Hooray!

Friday, December 19, 2008

This blog is a place for me to post my artwork. I'm thinking maybe I'll be more productive if I have more people looking at my work. I was inspired by my friend Emily, whose blog is tomboycomics.blogspot.com. Hooray!

Recently, I've been working on a series of watercolors of people dressed up at comic books conventions. I haven't gotten too far yet. I've only done these three, plus a really terrible one of a girl dressed up as Sailor Moon. Mikie mentioned that if I made enough of these to fill a book, he could probably get them sold at Comic Relief.

Here is Wonder Woman eating french fries. Yes, that is a Hot Dog On a Stick soda cup.

These two are a set. The character here is Solid Snake from the video game Metal Gear. In the game he is a big buff burley guy, but he often hides under boxes to avoid being seen by his enemies. I asked this guy if he could fit under the box he was carrying, and of course, he could.

I should be taking pictures of my big oil paintings soon, and as soon as I do I will post them here.